The Creek, the Crone, and the Crow
Chapter 1 The End
The End
Kate Shaw
It is the night that will change everything, and we wait unsettled, restless, picking lint from faded overalls, pulling hangnails on tough hands and threads from frayed dresses.
We’re in church but not on Sunday, so we don’t know if we need to keep quiet out of respect.
Is church sanctified every day of the week?
We keep mostly quiet out of good manners.
Reed-thin men lean forward with elbows on knees and spin dusty hats between calloused fingers, then sit back, sigh, and slouch.
Some clear their throats, needing their thirst quenched.
Women hold empty hands in their laps or the youngest child, slicking wayward hair down with spit, checking behind ears for grime.
I’m the teacher who stands in back and studies bare necks scrubbed clean and hair turned gray before its time.
For ten years I’ve been the outsider hoping to make a difference for these children.
Trying to make a place for myself that mattered.
A tenderness engulfs me for these people who will never be my people, such is the truth of belonging or not, and I don’t belong.
Preacher Eli announced last Sunday that good news was coming on this last Friday in May.
Every school day I sent home reminders, so here we are—mamas, daddies, and grannies of schoolchildren and the teacher all asked to leave what we’d been doing and meet at five o’clock.
The preacher and I’ve done our parts, and everyone complied out of obedience or curiosity—but the surprise is late, so we wait.
Luke, nine, and Jimbo Walker, ten, wearing outgrown coveralls and holey T-shirts, stand watch at the door, proud to have the task of lookout.
One of them poots, and the rude sound causes giggles, and Jimbo points an accusing finger at shy Luke, who blushes.
That’s when we hear a car strain up the hill and enter the clearing.
The boys yell, They comin’, they comin’ and rush to sit with their mama and daddy.
Preacher Eli steps out to greet the visitors.
The stranger speaks outside the door. “Where in the Sam Hill are we, Eli? We still in North Carolina, for Christ’s sake?
” He snickers in a cynical way. He doesn’t know his voice carries in the high air.
That his taking the Lord’s name in vain precedes him as a sign of poor character among these believers.
His disdain sours the air with more than flatulence.
The two jaspers and Eli enter church and walk past me, though my hand is out to shake theirs.
My cheeks flush at the insult. They follow Eli the ten steps to the front and turn to face us.
One is short and the other tall, like runty Eli and six-foot me.
But unlike Eli, these men wear blue suits that fit and matching ties not worn to a shine.
The preacher introduces them with respect that curdles my stomach.
“Friends, this here is Mr. Clooney, the superintendent for all schools in Yancey County. And Mr. Jessup, the assistant superintendent. They oversee seven public schools in Burnsville, and they come all the way up here to deliver good news bout a change coming to Baines Creek.”
Eli grins extra wide like he’s a barker at a carnival selling snake oil.
Maybe he’s making the best of a bad situation.
I try to be patient with him because he’s the reason I’m here.
His plea for a teacher for this settlement was written on an index card and posted on a bulletin board in an Asheville church.
I sought cover from a thunderstorm and found my next calling.
We are friends who spar over everything.
Eli is faith-filled and blindly trusts the unprovable; I’m the pragmatist who requires tangible proof.
He is ruled by the narrow teachings of seminary; I’m educated in the liberal arts.
His devil has horns and can be exorcised with words from his Bible; my devil is called Mother.
The one thing we agree upon is our hope for the children in this high place.
If only Eli’s prayers and my jar of penny candy could guarantee a brighter future.
“Gentlemen—” Eli starts with a flourish of his arm, then sits in front, resting that arm on the back of the pew.
He turns an admiring face up to the men, and I stay standing in back, worried.
How are folks going to take this change that didn’t come in an official letter addressed to me?
It was delivered by Eli sitting in my cabin, sipping a cup of tea, casually dropping the news like a lethal bomb.
Mr. Clooney pinches his thin lips over buck teeth and stares at a blank spot on the back wall to the left of me, as if poverty is catching if gazed upon.
His nose twitches at the smell of honest sweat.
He reminds me of the pitiful Ichabod Crane character who interviewed me for this position ten years back.
That overcrowded Asheville office reeked of nicotine and despair.
Any scraps of hope I had to bring with me, and that precious hope dissipates today.
“Like Preacher Perkins said,” he starts with an air of pomposity too big for this plain place.
“I am the superintendent of seven schools in Yancey County. We have over two thousand students enrolled in traditional schooling. We take their education seriously with a regimented routine and testable outcomes as governed by the National Board of Education.”
He looks up at the ceiling before delivering the surprise. “Now this here settlement is the last one-room schoolhouse in all of North Carolina, and we’ve been ordered to absorb your children into our county schools.”
Ordered to absorb? Is he being intentionally cruel? He ends with “Come Friday, June thirteenth of this year nineteen and eighty, this one-room schoolhouse is gonna close. And come late August, your children are gonna go down the mountain to regular school.”
From the looks on people’s faces, it doesn’t feel like Mr. Clooney brought good news at all. It’s met by a stilted silence, and it settles uneasy on worn shoulders.
Buck Dillard, sitting next to his wife Sadie Blue and their three children, says what’s on everybody’s mind.
“What’s wrong with our one-room schoolhouse?
All us families up here got schooled here and done fine.
And how you figure they can travel them roads twelve miles to school and twelve miles back in bad weather when we cain’t do it ourselves? ”
Mr. Clooney smiles for the first time, but the chilled smile doesn’t reach his eyes.
His oversize teeth make him look like the jackass he is.
“We aim to fix that blasted road, that’s how.
We bout broke an axle coming up here tonight driving those last miles, and fording that creek was plum scary.
The Department of Transportation is gonna start hauling gravel to fill in them gall dang potholes and shore up shoulders.
Then we gonna build a bridge over that dern creek so nobody’s got to drive through deep water. ”
“Then what?” Buck continues as our spokesman. “You gonna give us gas for our trucks? Tires that ain’t bald so we can git to our kids’ lives off the mountain?”
“Course not. We’re doing this so we can send a school bus every morning and afternoon. Your kids are gonna get picked up and dropped off at the old schoolhouse.”
“What for?” Buck asks earnestly.
“What for?” Mr. Clooney snaps back with a slap. He grows rigid from being questioned. “So they’re educated in the real world, that’s what for. So they got a fighting chance to rise above ignorance.”
Oh mercy. This is not going well at all.
Folks stand in quiet rebellion. They begin to herd their families toward the door when Eli intercedes in a rising voice. “Hold your horses, everybody. Please stay. Please. We’re talking about your children’s future.” His plea turns to a whine as tired bodies continue to flow toward the door.
Buck sees me standing in back and halts the exodus with the rise of his hand. The hand thickly scarred by fire ten years back, connected to a gentle body damaged in a coal mining accident. He came home a living hero whom folks worried about and fretted over. The crowd stops.
“Miz Shaw,” Buck says with respect. “What you got to say bout this change for our babies?”
Eyes are on me, their last resort after the teacher’s house burned down.
Me, who had been fired for helping a student who was pregnant.
Me, who came to this remote place to teach without enough books or desks.
Where in winter, ice forms inside tall windows but potatoes cook in the woodstove for the hungry.
The blackboard is cracked but not the spirit of folks who manage with scraps and hold tight to tradition.
Electricity came awhile back so there is puny light on overcast days in a handful of places, but it remains a dark place with long shadows.
“Miz Shaw.” Preacher Eli’s voice is desperate behind the wall of people. “Why don’t you come up here so folks can sit comfortable and hear better?”
I slowly walk to the front wondering what to say that will matter.
Little is in my control now except the anger I hold in check.
Even the most basic courtesy has not been extended to me, but I choose not to address the visitors’ rudeness.
The heart of this story isn’t about me. I knew this schoolhouse couldn’t stay off the education radar forever, but I’d hoped we would be forgotten for longer.
Hoped that the road to get here was too steep.
Hoped the cost too high to herd a dozen children into the standardized world.
It sounds so simple on paper. Bureaucratic decisions always do.
But in truth, the one-room schoolhouse has become obsolete.
Inside the confines of our four walls, I bend rules or ignore them.
I understand my students’ struggles. I am tender when the school system is tough.
Being told at the end of school speaks volumes about the disrespect being shown to these people: We are an afterthought.
I get to the front and Misters Clooney and Jessup don’t acknowledge me.
They hold tight to their center spot. In their eyes, I’m a babysitter who wears trousers and boots and whose hair is cut too short.
A woman with degrees brought to her knees and relegated to the fringes. But I doubt they checked my résumé.
I do know this: These are limited men ruled by limited laws, and it’s the first time anyone from the Department of Education has come to Baines Creek.
Shame on them. Families still stand and I say, “Please sit.” Their skittish eyes hold fear because they are at a crossroads: To stay in the backwoods and fight a never-ending battle or to venture into the modern world that’s coming—ready or not.
I wait in front of these people who humble me. I look upon each face and wait till the brink of embarrassment because I don’t know what to say. Families wait, too, and the respect they show in waiting is noticed by the visitors. For the first time, they glance at me.
Finally, I begin and confess. “Last weekend I heard about this change coming for your children.”
Bodies squirm, disappointed that I kept this secret from them.
“Heard it from Preacher Eli. He asked me to keep it to myself, which was hard to do. He wanted you to hear the news from strangers instead of us.” I watch Eli squirm. My emotions build, and I clear my throat to keep the swell of tears away.
“No one from the education office told me directly. They gave me no warning.”
The strangers’ faces stay blank.
“I was as surprised as you that we have at last been recognized as important. And why now, you ask. Why now, when we’ve got our daily routine down and your children can read, write, and do figures. Some of you are learning right along with them.”
A few bodies scoot up straighter.
“Why now, when we finally have enough secondhand books for everybody to study for their grade level?”
Heads begin to nod.
“Why now, when we’ve printed ten issues of Creekrise. That newsletter printed in Burnsville highlights your traditions and talents. You see your names and your children’s stories in print and are rightly proud.”
They’re all nodding now, but those are our successes earned against staggering odds.
We’ve clawed our way to some semblance of literacy.
Everyone here is supreme at making do with little, but they’re not trained to follow the structure and regulations of the modern world.
Their children can’t compete for good-paying jobs.
I look with gentle eyes upon my friends whose lives always wear a tinge of gray, and I say what I must. “We have two weeks left, but your children deserve more than this one-room schoolhouse and me. Send them to town.”